Meng-Hsuan Lee
Meng-Hsuan Lee 李孟瑄 joined the PhD program in 2018. He studies 19th and 20th-century architecture and urbanism. His dissertation, “The Shophouse and the City: The Making of Taiwan’s Modern Vernacular Architecture, c. 1860 to the Present,” examines how the shophouse remade the urban built environment of modern Taiwan from late Qing (c. 1860–1895) through Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945) to the postwar and contemporary periods. It investigates how shophouses acted as central agents in transforming Taiwanese cities into landscapes of leisure and commercial speculation, and in helping to construct self-identities in Taiwan’s modern history. Broadly, he considers planning and regulation techniques, histories and theories of ornament, and media archaeology.
His doctoral studies have been generously supported by the Yu San Ma Taiwan Fellowship and the Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship (SYLFF) from the Weatherhead Institute, the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Japanese Art, and the Japan Art History Forum (JAHF).
Prior to joining Columbia, Meng received his M.A. in Humanities (art history) from the University of Chicago, where he wrote his master’s thesis examining the politics of urban memory surrounding Shih-Shih South Village 四四南村, an architectural preservation project in Taipei. Previously, he received his B.A. in Drama and Theatre from the National Taiwan University, where he also worked as a scenic designer. He currently resides in Chicago and has worked as an adjunct instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and architecture tour docent for the Chicago Taiwanese Architecture Institute.
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